[vox] Changing your OEM Windows 7 from Dual Boot to Virtual Machine

[Rod Roark]

I have a laptop that came with Windows 7 and added Linux Mint for dual 
boot, and have always been annoyed by the need to interrupt my Mint 
session to do something in Windows (usually screen sharing in Skype).  
 From time to time I've thought it would be nice to put it in a VM 
instead, but the task seemed either too much trouble or more money than 
it was worth.  Mainly I hated the thought of sending more money to 
Microsoft for something I already had.

When I somehow messed up the Windows partition and made it unbootable 
this became more pressing.  Also I wanted to take advantage of the free 
upgrade to Win 10 before it expires on July 29.

With some web searching I learned that it's possible to install a 
standard Windows 7 into a VirtualBox VM using an OEM product key. I was 
able to do this and then upgrade to Win 10.  It occurs me that the steps 
may be useful to some of you here, so I am outlining them below.  This 
assumes you will upgrade it to Win 10... if not, modify accordingly.

o Look on the Microsoft sticker on your computer and note the Windows 
version and product key.

o Find an ISO download for the Windows 7 SP1 flavor that matches your 
OEM install.  It will likely be a torrent as MS no longer makes them 
available unless you have a non-OEM product key. File names and their 
SHA1 checksums may be found here:

   https://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/downloads/hh442898

o Download it, compute the SHA1 checksum and either verify it against 
the above or do a web search for that checksum to make sure it's legit.

o Make a VirtualBox VM for Windows 10 with at least 3 GB RAM and 40 GB 
virtual disk. Yes you will initially be installing Win 7 but it's 
important that it has the CPU support for Win 10. Below we assume you 
named it "WinVM".

o Do this to get the hardware UUID of the new VM:

   VBoxManage showvminfo WinVM | grep 'Hardware UUID'

o Do this to cause future clones of the VM to have the same hardware UUID:

   VBoxManage modifyvm WinVM --hardwareuuid xxxx
   ... where xxxx is the UUID shown by the previous step.

o Attach the ISO to the DVD drive of the new VM and start it up.

o Install Win 7 and put in your OEM product key when prompted.

o After the install make sure Windows 7 is activated.

o Run Internet Explorer inside the VM and install this single update:

   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3135445

   This installs a newer version of Windows Update which is helpful 
because the original one is very slow!  The new one is also slow, but 
hopefully not so much.

o Also at this time download and install the "sdelete" utility from here:

   https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/sdelete.aspx

o Run Windows Update and install all the important and optional updates. 
This will take hours.  There will be some reboots involved.

o You should now have the Windows 10 upgrade offer on your taskbar. 
Proceed with that upgrade.

o Make sure the new Windows installation is activated.

o Install VirtualBox Guest Additions into the VM.

o Run Disk Cleanup to remove all unnecessary files.

o Open a command prompt in the VM, go to the directory where you put 
sdelete and type this command to zero out unused space:

   sdelete -z

o Make a clone of the VM using the VirtualBox GUI.  You might call it 
"Win10". Because you ran sdelete this will take up much less disk space 
on the host computer.

o Boot up the clone and make sure it is still activated.

o Remove the old WinVM machine with the VirtualBox GUI.

Enjoy!